


To Quote Lear

by Alixtii



Category: Angel: the Series, Buffy the Vampire Slayer
Genre: Between Seasons/Series, Between The Seasons Ficathon, Cage, Canon Het Relationship, F/M, Fellatio, Flashback, Het, Literary Reference, Los Angeles, Nudity, Oral Sex, POV Male Character, POV Third Person, Present Tense, Quotation, Season/Series 03-04 Hiatus, Season/Series 06-07 Hiatus, Vampires, Voyeurism
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-30
Updated: 2006-06-30
Packaged: 2017-10-02 23:51:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,080
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11968
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Alixtii/pseuds/Alixtii
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Closets are for secrets.</p>
            </blockquote>





	To Quote Lear

**Author's Note:**

  * For [seeingxanadu](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=seeingxanadu).



“How to prevent the fiend, and to kill vermin,” the vampire said. “Childe Roland to the dark tower came. His word was still. Fie, foh, and fum, I smell the blood of a British man."

“If you are well enough to quote _Lear_,” Wesley observed, “you are well enough to take your blood without ripping my arm off.” Still he handed the cup full of warm blood to the vampire quickly, stepping back out of range of the cage as soon as the miserable creature had latched onto it.

This was not his idea of a good time, and he had said as much to Lilah. _If you don’t mind, Lilah, I’d rather not keep an insane vampire in my closet for all that much longer,_ he had told her.

_Why?_ she asked, with that sly smile of hers which could be so infuriating. _You plan on putting someone else in there?_

_Traditionally, I believe closets are used to hold clothing._ Spike drank the blood quickly, ravenously.

_And homosexuals,_ Lilah added. _And portals to magical lands—no wait, that’s a wardrobe, isn’t it? And in this particular case, your closet happens to house a vampire._

Yes, his closet housed a vampire. William the Bloody, to be exact. He who had slayed not only one, but two Slayers. _And I want him out._

_Well, it’s sweet that you want Spike to come out of the closet, but I don’t think the normal taboos hold for vampires. My guess is, he’s been out for centuries, he just doesn’t make a big show of it. What did you want, a turtleneck? Not everyone is you?_ This during an activity which emphatically did _not_ call Wes’ heterosexuality—or Lilah’s, for that matter—into question.

_Why did I agree to help you with this again?_ It was a good question, Wesley reflected as he gingerly extracted the now-empty cup from the vampire’s cage.

_Because Spike has a soul and you don’t trust us to handle him with the proper care. If you want out, just hand him over to us and we’ll take care of it from here._ He was doing this because as much as he wanted to be doing it, he wanted Wolfram and Hart to be doing it all that much less. The story of his life, choosing the lesser evil.

“I am your host,” Wesley reminded Spike. Not that he supposed the vampire was able to forget it, trapped in his cage in the closet. "With robber's hands in my hospitable favors you should not ruffle thus.” The vampire wasn’t the only one who could quote _Lear_, after all.

_And why should I help you?_

_Because you like to pretend you are still one of the good guys,_ Lilah had said. _And this is doing the right thing._

_Then why, may I ask, are you doing it?_

Lilah’s laugh was haughty, yet silken. _Wouldn’t you like to know_, she said. _He’s a souled vampire. That means Wolfram &amp; Hart has to be interested in him._

_The Shanshu prophecy._

_Well, he’s ineligible at present. Only Champions need apply. And where else would he be more likely to become a Champion than Sunnydale?_

_Shouldn’t I be striving to make sure he ends up anywhere but then?_

_Do you really want one less warrior for good, Wes? What if the world ends for want of a souled vampire? Can you take that risk?_

Wesley was almost completely clothed, his pants and boxers pull down only the absolute minimum necessary permit involvement in the lurid act itself. Lilah, on the other hand, was completely naked, wearing not but a pair of high heels. And yet, Wesley knew, she had been in control the entire time, her skin just another costume, and it was he who was vulnerable, naked in all but the literal sense beneath her gaze.

She knelt down in front of him, but somehow it was not an act of submission when she did it, but a claiming of what was hers. He was already hard, of course, as she took him in her mouth; hormones know no sense of virtue or loyalty, after all. The fact that the naked woman in front of him represented pure evil mattered not a whit next to the fact that she was not only naked (although that, in most cases, would have been enough) but also beautiful—an objective aesthetic appraisal that represented no approval of Lilah in any way.

Biological mechanisms that were the result of millions of years of natural selection kicked in as they were designed to do, and soon Wes was only a hair-trigger away from expelling that which, were he in a womb and not a mouth, would have the potential to produce new life. To create rather than merely be consumed.

And then Lilah pulled away, stood up, leaving him wanting for that one last touch. Without a word, she walked across his bedroom, and opened his closet door. _Madness in great ones must not unwatched go,_ she said.

“Thou'lt come no more,” Spike said. “Never, never, never, never, never! Pray you, undo this button.”

Wesley shook himself out of his reverie. He took the cup back to the kitchen, washed it, set it in the drying rack, good as new. He paused, then, as if thinking of something for the first time, walked over to his cabinet and pulled out a bottle of aged whiskey. Carefully wiping the cup so as to dry it, Wesley then set it on the table and poured it half full of whiskey. He drank it without tasting it, and so could not tell whether he had successfully washed away all the blood or not.

This had to end. Tomorrow, he and Lilah would rent a U-Haul and take Spike back to Sunnydale, dumping him somewhere Buffy would be sure to find him. Right on top of the Hellmouth, maybe; the Slayer would be sure to end up there sooner or later in the course of her duties. “That men should put an enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains,” he said quietly, ruefully. No doubt Spike could hear him perfectly well with his vampire hearing; he was only a room away. “That we should, with joy, pleasance, revel, and applause, transform ourselves into beasts.”

He wanted his closet back. There were other uses to which that cage could be put, and there were other souled vampires whose affairs needed to be handled.

**Author's Note:**

> [LJ/DW Comments](http://alixtii.dreamwidth.org/80884.html#comments)


End file.
